emotional

That's exactly what I fear - not realising anything. People say death is nothing to be afraid of, which is right: to fear death is to be afraid of the nothing.

People have been telling me death isn't a thing to fear ever since I began fearing it at eight. It never worked. I've tried distracting my thoughts off death. It never worked. The fact that some day, some time death will eventually come, means I'm never going to be released of the fear of it.

Atheism has its various attractions and goodies, and on the whole is a very coherent, consistent system. But it has one fatal flaw: the Doctrine of Natural Death (death as oblivion). For this reason, I could never possibly be happy in atheism. Every time I think of death - and I do so even when I try not to - I just feel like screaming. It's simply just too bad to be true.

Starboy

emotional, if you are not pulling my leg it sounds like you have an intense phobia. Have you sought professional help?

Starboy

Spaz

emotional, you seem a little too...emotional. Death is obviously natural, otherwise the planet would've been overpopulated and used up long long long ago and you would never have existed to ponder death in the first place. Without death there is no life, as without bad there is no good. If there was no opposite to compare it to then it would just be normal. The fact that one day you will die shouldn't scare you but just put life into perspective, you have one life and you have to do all you can in it. Some ancient people felt that only way to achieve immortality was to be remembered and talked about after your death, so that should be your goal, do good for the planet so you can achieve your immortality.

kctan

You need buddhism. Go to the non-abrahamic discussions & find yourself a buddhist teacher.

Why just limit yourself to all things material ? Being an atheist doesn't meant that you've to limit your thoughts of the afterlife (if there's one). You could think of whatever scenario you want for yourself & who could be the wiser ? Nobody really knows what happen after one dies, be it oblivion or some form of quasi life nobody really knows for sure. Speculate to yourself, let your mind supply you with whatever scenario you wish, there's no harm in thinking.

BTW you should start rethinking about life seriously, if you think that every thing must either be good or evil, then you're in for a great disappointment. One must learn to accept life for what it is & to discover what it is not. There's no such thing as good & evil, if you think it's good, it's good, if you think it's evil, it's evil. Ultimately it's you who are making things either good or evil.

Sabine Grant

salut kctan... I know very little about buddhism. Are you saying that the buddhist faith promotes subjective morality and gives human beings the choice to interpret rape or incest or molestation of a 5 year old as possibly "good"? I can see how one can project notions of evil on something someone else evaluates as good... but when it comes down to acting on the thought process of evaluating that evil is actualy good.... ouch!

the_cave

Actually, he might be on to something...if you are in fact having obsessive thoughts about death, I'm not sure a philosophical conversion is going to fix it...and even if it isn't obsessive or anything like that, you still might want to try it--it can be quite helpful with concerns like this.

Treacle Worshipper

Emotional,
I'm not trying to be funny, but do you fear going to sleep at night? 'Cos when you're asleep you don't realise anything either, you're in "the nothing". If you don't fear sleep, why should you fear death? That's my view anyway. I don't fear sleep, therefore there is no reason for me to fear death.
TW

kctan

Then why do you think a rapist will rape a 5 year old ? Why do you think those pedophilic catholic priests molest those young boys & force them to perform anal sex ?

It's fucking good to them. You need a cold dash of reality & badly.

BTW the buddhist faith don't promotes subjective morality & gives human beings the choice to interprete good & evil as they deem fit. It's suggested to 'emotional' as regards to his/her fear of death.

Sabine Grant

Thanks for clarifying your previous statement. As to evaluating what I need, it may be prudent to base your evaluation on knowing me personaly.

emotional

But I know sleep is only a temporary death, after which I come back to life. Death is a permanent sleep. It just makes my head spin to think of it - no feelings, no perceptions, no nothing!

Materialism - death is natural, a inevitable case of material reconfiguration in which the control device (the brain) stops functioning.

Gnosticism - death is illusion (maya), a leaving of the real immortal self out of the material cage of the body.

Christianity - death is the result of the Fall of Man, the judicious curse of God which came thereafter. It is an evil, unnatural event which can be cured only by belief in the one who triumphed over death.

I've been toying about with the Christian explanation. However, apart from the slight oopsy that it is scientifically refuted (there were no real Adam and Eve, we evolved from ape-like ancestors), there is also a logistics flaw in the story. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply before the Fall. So if there was no death before the Fall, and they had not fallen, the result would be overpopulation, which (barring the cop-out of miracles) would mean death. Looks like God made a slip-up in his plans.

The gnostic system of reincarnation seems a little more sustainable than the Christian scene, but again, as with Christianity, there's no evidence. Sometimes I read Dr Moody's Life After Life to gain a little hope, but inwardly I know near-death experiences are no more a pointer to objective reality than LSD hallucinations are.

This leaves me with materialism, and the doctrine of final death which I most dread. I suppose this is the price I have to pay for acknowledging the truth.